Democrats betray liberalism, become the new authoritarians

 Carl M. Cannon, here:

But the most glaring gap is between conservatives and liberals, i.e., between Republicans and Democrats. On the issue of free expression, at least, Republicans are not the authoritarian party. That distinction belongs to the Democrats, the party launched by Thomas Jefferson — the Founding Father who famously said that if he were forced to choose between “a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” ...

If Republicans’ aversion to censorship was transactional, they would have identified Democratic-friendly misinformation for removal. But they didn’t. “Regardless of the partisan slant of the content, Democrats are more likely to support the removal of content, while Republicans are more likely to oppose removing content,” the study noted.

It was Democrats who more often employed situational ethics, giving a pass to misinformation that helped their side. Most Republicans didn’t differentiate based on which way the false headline cut.

Detroit Free Press admits 13 gun reform bills offered by Michigan Democrats would not have stopped MSU killings, and that it doesn't matter

 It's pure emotional posturing which ignores the emotional posturing which caused the tragedy in the first place.

The progressive prosecutor could have charged the future killer with weapons violations which would have prevented him from legally buying the new weapons used in this crime.

Existing laws might indeed have prevented the crime, if only liberals had followed them. But misplaced feelings of white guilt overrode doing what the law demanded.

Republicans better man up because Democrats sure won't.

Here:

If these laws would not have stopped this shooting, well. They might stop the next one.

Brought to you by the same folks who want to restrict free speech

 

Time to Say 'Enough' to Second Amendment Absolutism

Houston Chronicle

 

 

The generation of Neil Young rebelled against everything that was right and this one won't rebel against anything that's wrong

Meanwhile Willie Nelson trended on Twitter the other day, which just loves that old "hippie" along with the likes of Neil Young.

Not this Willie, though, who was kinda slow on the uptake. Just ask the IRS.

The Beatles was kangs when Willie was still in overalls in 1965 and broke up when Willie was still doing covers of Joni Mitchell in 1970.

 

Neil Young threatened to ditch Spotify over Joe Rogan because Rogan believes in free speech. And Spotify said: "OK. See ya."

 

I'm still laughing.

 

Peggy Noonan has second thoughts, recalls with fondness the crabbed public square of Fairness Doctrine infamy

What a shock, right? Roman Catholic from Brooklyn thinks Methodist hick from Missouri should have been shut up long ago.

Rush Limbaugh’s Complicated Legacy :

By the 1980s it was being argued that the doctrine itself was hurting free speech: It was a governmental intrusion on the freedom of broadcasters, and, perversely, it inhibited the presentation of controversial issues. There were so many voices in the marketplace, and more were coming; fairness and balance would sort themselves out.

In 1987 the doctrine was abolished, a significant Reagan-era reform. But I don’t know. Let me be apostate again. Has anything in our political culture gotten better since it was removed? Aren’t things more polarized, more bitter, less stable?

I’m not sure it was good for America.

Imagine if religion were similarly circumscribed.

From 17 distinct religious groups in 1776 and about 3,200 congregations, today there are north of 300 groups and 300,000 congregations.

The lack of unanimity surely bothers devout believers in one or the other, some of whom are certain everyone else is going to hell, and something should be done to stop it.

I suspect the one true church of Peggy Noonan feels the same way, except its liberalism has invented the half-way house of Purgatory to roast malefactors until ready for Valhalla.

Deal with it, Peggy. It's still a Protestant country.

Madcow's ratings were all that mattered

Freedom of the press: The press is not an "institution", it's a business, usually a business of lies. And people pay to be lied to. That's the real scandal.

Former PIMCO wheeler-dealer is against freedom of the financial press: Why, you might sell before he does

Dead white Antifa terrorists Willem Van Spronsen in Tacoma and Connor Betts in Dayton both embraced AOC's inflammatory concentration camp rhetoric

Nolte: Two Terrorists Embraced Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s ‘Concentration Camp’ Smear:

The real news is here is the establishment media’s shameless double standard. While the media are going crazy over the El Paso terrorist’s anti-Hispanic rhetoric and attempting to claim Trump was his inspiration, the very same media are dutifully covering up how two left-wing terrorists embraced Ocasio-Cortez’s inflammatory rhetoric.

Personally, I object to this kind of guilt-by-association. Watching the news media attempt to stifle free speech by connecting someone’s violence to another person’s speech is as un-American as it gets. But the media’s own rules do connect Ocasio-Cortez and two members of her Socialist Squad directly to these two terrorists.

I should add that it’s fascinating to watch the deep-in-denial media further destroy its own credibility by covering these facts up. The media know that we know the truth. The media know that the truth about Ocasio-Cortez  and these two terrorists is all over social and alternative media, but still they don’t care that we know because their partisan rage constantly overwhelms their decency and integrity.

All the media can do is rage against Trump, even with the “concentration camp” elephant in the room.

 

Freedom of speech, yes even for these two crackpots, but hey, it's Facebook: We decide who speaks

Like just about everyone else on the left, Joel Kotkin continues to twist himself in pretzels to avoid calling our system what it already is

State capitalism.

It is the socialism of the right, despite what names people may give it. The fascist model in which business and government cooperate now more, now less was not defeated in World War II. The superior American version simply defeated the German one, and eventually also the left's inherently weaker version in Russia.

It has triumphed globally, brought to the fore in America by the libertarian resurgence under Ronald Reagan, imitated by the jealous Euro project, and notably exported to China, where it was eagerly embraced as no threat to Marxism. To the genuine Marxist, remember, free-trade is welcome because it hastens the global revolution. Belt and Road participants, take note.

The experiential groundwork for global state capitalism was laid long ago by the King and Bank of England in their joint enterprise known as the Thirteen Colonies. Everyone imitates this now in principle if not always in particulars. But everywhere it flourishes it is facilitated by the same thing, the central banking systems which coordinate their activities through rules administered under Basel III. The contemporary exemplars of state capitalism fancy that they are substantively a world away from Hitler's Germany, because, well, the Jews. We don't kill Jews, insist these experts at mass abortion and Uyghur mass re-education. 

It's the historical resonances which bother the left in using the phrase, but the underlying facts aren't different in substance. Materialism today means not having to say you're sorry for treating people like depreciated or unappreciated assets. Older workers in the West are routinely tossed aside for being too costly. Potential younger competitors are hamstrung by a culture of costly credentialing prerequisites. When such people become worthless enough, it isn't unlikely that in some places they could stop being considered people altogether (typically where atheism reigns) so that they could be slaughtered wholesale with the same relative efficiency already applied to the unborn. The tech already exists to do this. The only question is when will the people exist who are possessed of enough nerve.   

Here's Kotkin on this so-called "new, innovative approach" which looks like nothing so much as the old Soviet Union, with its hostility centered on the middle class, its dreary blocks of drab apartment buildings, the dim pall of surveillance and conformity lurking everywhere, complete with its own privileged new class in service to the party .01 percent:

Oligarchal socialism allows for the current, ever-growing concentration of wealth and power in a few hands — notably tech and financial moguls — while seeking ways to ameliorate the reality of growing poverty, slowing social mobility and indebtedness. This will be achieved not by breaking up or targeting the oligarchs, which they would fight to the bitter end, but through the massive increase in state taxpayer support. ... [T]he tech oligarchy — the people who run the five most capitalized firms on Wall Street — have [sic] a far less egalitarian vision. ... [T]hey see government spending as a means of keeping the populist pitchforks away. ... Handouts, including housing subsidies, could guarantee for the next generation a future not of owned houses, but rented small, modest apartments. ...  They appeal to progressives by advocating politically correct views . . .. Faced with limited future prospects, more millennials already prefer socialism to capitalism and generally renounce constitutionally sanctioned free speech . . .. [I]ncreased income guarantees, nationalized health care, housing subsidies, rent control and free education could also help firms maintain a gig-oriented [slave] economy since these employers do not provide the basic benefits often offered by more traditional “evil” corporations . . ..  [T]he oligarchy, representing basically the top .01 percent of the population, are primarily interested not in lower taxes but in protecting their market shares and capital. ... The losers here will be our once-protean middle class. Unlike the owners of corporations in the past, oligarchs have no interest in their workers become homeowners or moving up the class ladder. Their agenda instead is forever-denser, super-expensive rental housing for their primarily young, and often short-term, employees. ... The tech moguls get to remain wealthy beyond the most extreme dreams of avarice, while their allies in progressive circles and the media, which they increasingly own, continue to hector everyone else about giving up their own aspirations. All the middle and upwardly mobile working class gets is the right to pay ever more taxes, while they watch many of their children devolve into serfs, dependent on alms and subsidies for their survival.

Reality Winner wins 63-month sentence with reality for espionage

Reality Winner sentenced for leaking top secret U.S. report:

(Reuters) - A federal judge sentenced former U.S. intelligence contractor Reality Winner on Thursday to more than five years in prison after she admitted leaking to a media outlet [The Intercept] a top secret report on Russian interference in U.S. elections, her attorney said. ...

The NSA document she gave the news outlet contained technical details on what it said were Russian attempts to hack election officials in the United States and a voting-machine company before the November 2016 presidential election, two U.S. officials with knowledge of the case have said. ...

Betsy Reed, editor in chief of The Intercept, said in a statement that Winner should be honored, and that her sentencing and other prosecutions of whistleblowers were attacks on freedom of speech and of the press.

“Instead of being recognized as a conscience-driven whistleblower whose disclosure helped protect U.S. elections, Winner was prosecuted with vicious resolve by the Justice Department under the Espionage Act,” Reed said. 

The Intercept laughably maintains that publishing Winner's leaked document long after Election 2016 in June 2017 helped alert US states to Russian interference in the 2016 election when, as The Intercept itself admits, Russian hacking attempts of US elections have been and are "still front-page news almost two years later":

The federal government kept several states allegedly targeted by hackers in the dark about the specifics of these attacks until The Intercept published its story.

In fact, the day after The Intercept’s story came out, the Election Assistance Commission — the federal agency in charge of assisting state election officials — wrote an urgent bulletin to states, calling the report “credible” and urging state officials to read it. The EAC then provided advice on how to take action. (The commission, unbelievably, tweeted the hashtag #RealityWinner to promote its bulletin on social media).

Michigan's two main universities are now so toxic only a fool would send his kid to either one

UM feels a lot like the USSR for its severe restrictions on freedom of speech and its deliberate encouragement of rat finks.

In wake of Nassar settlement, MSU proposes budget cut as only $39 million of $500 million sex abuse settlement is covered by liability insurance.

The taxpayers ought to demand that their assets be sold and both be burned to the ground.

Reuters/Yahoo News can't bring itself to say China's Xi Jinping is a dictator who's enemy is freedom of speech

Tut tut, looks like enemy propaganda.

Here in "China's Xi says internet control key to stability":

Chinese regulators have been driving a sweeping crackdown on media content, which has been gaining force since last year, spreading a chill among content makers and distributors.

No shit, Sherlock.

Disqus' Jewel Box and Channel Z don't believe in freedom of speech anymore than Takimag does

Jeff Flake's "free press" hardly covered Hillary's health problems but is obsessed with finding something wrong with Trump's

At least now we know that Senator Jeff Flake believes everything he reads in the newspaper

Speech here.

"Of course, a major difference between politicians and the free press is that the press usually corrects itself when it gets something wrong. Politicians don't."

Well har-dee har har har at the last person alive to believe in the free press. Check that. John Kasich was pretty darn moved to receive the endorsement of The New York Times. But, come to think of it, Kasich is another failed politician just like Flake. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Meanwhile The New York Post is still just a buck. Get 'em while they're hot.

If you deny freedom of speech to a fascist "by all means necessary" then you've become one

Not my father's America: 44% now reject . . . freedom of speech, which means tyranny isn't simply theoretical anymore

"No free speech for fascists" is incoherent and Orwellian

Charles C. W. Cooke, here:

“No free speech for fascists” is an incoherent, almost Orwellian, position. Happily – and on a routinely “bipartisan” basis – the Supreme Court concurs.

Good idea: Remove public funding from any university failing to insure free speech everywhere on campus